Advice to managers: 'Leave it better than you found it'

From time to time I receive requests from a new manager or supervisor asking for any pearls of wisdom to help them as they begin their new role in the administrative field.

They have the wide-eyed exuberance of youth, a child-like view at the practice they have been in for years and are now seeing for the first time with a “fresh snow” view: untouched, clean, white, gentle drifts of snow.

Those of us who have been there realize they will soon see that what they are really looking at is end of winter: dirty snow and dreary, cloudy skies.

The new manager from the outside that has never worked a single day in the practice and is unaware of all the back line stories.

The office employee that has been promoted into this role. (In some cases, the new manager views this as the kiss-of-death.)

Regardless of which category the manager falls into, the process is pretty much the same: a change was decreed by the powers that be and new management has been ordained.

I have often joked with people when they talk about learning to be a manager that it would be much easier to just read the manual versus the trial and error method that routinely occurs.

The funny thing is that there is no manual to walk you through the step-by-step challenges that are going to be occurring to you at break-neck speed. Your new manual is going to be now defined as your gut.

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